Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment’s battle system is all about instructions. Players can give commands to characters like use a skill, stop using a skill, switch to defense or recovery skills. When you aren’t fighting monsters like the enemy crab thing shown in this group of screenshots you can hang out with the game’s heroines like Leafa and Silica.

Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment comes out for PlayStation Vita on April 24. First print copies include a wedding dress costume for female characters.

*Intro-movie shows new girl in opposition to Kirito, fighting him in a way that indicates she’s his equal in skill*
*countdown starts until new girl falls for Kirito and becomes a damsel in distress he has to save*

Yes. Still Forever Bitter about second half of the show.

AuroraMoon

I pretend that the second half of the show never happened.

Göran Isacson

Ha ha, at times it feels like that would be the best option, but alas.The poor showing there, combined with how SAO became such a big deal while a far better show airing at the same time, Shinsekai Yori, languished in obscurity… my saltyness just won’t let me forgive and forget.

Raltrios

It was so much better in the LN. I can’t forgive the anime for cutting out Tonkii…

;__;

RichyGaming

Who is Tonkii?

Raltrios

A monster in the underground area of Jotunheimr, under Yggdrasil. Kirito and Leafa save it after they fell down there on their way to the city, and it helps them out in return.
It also just so happens to lead into the quest to obtain Excalibur, so I have no idea how the anime will pull off the Caliburn arc if they don’t go back and fix this.

Göran Isacson

That’s new info to me: maybe they didn’t plan to do more than one season and thought it wouldn’t be important? Then again, considering the success the show had maybe that’s quite shortsighted of them…

natchu96

Yeah, maybe it they figured it wasn’t immediately relevant to the plot, and they weren’t dead set on a season 2 yet at the time . . .

Raltrios

As much as I hate the fact that Tonkii (or the entire subplot, rather) was left out, I also can’t say I don’t understand why…

When all you have to go on for what Tonkii looks like is ‘elephant + jellyfish’ and later ‘elephant + butterfly,’ they must have been at a complete loss to draw it.
But not getting to see something other than my messed-up mental image has me a little buttmad :/

Vsin

Well, if you get far enough into the LNs, the real cycle is Badass > Damsel > Badass. Everybody needs to be saved by Kirito eventually, but after that point they’re all independent.

Sorta. Asuna does get to show off in Mother’s Rosario, and Shino still manages to be badass and a damsel at the same time, but Sugu is kinda just…there. Seriously, Sugu wasn’t popular at all until she shoved her boobs into the camera.

[S]unjΔy of Equestria

I liked Sugu before she shoved her boobs into the camera.

Göran Isacson

Ah, then it at least sounds like when the second season comes (because I’ma guess it made enough cash for a second season) the show might be more tolerable. Also, I suppose that Shinon is a character that the anime never got to?

natchu96

She’s the next arc (Phantom Bullet)’s heroine. Sniper, top player, slight (huge) case of PTSD, nearly zero combat ability at close range but you’d be damned to even get that close. Her aim is that good . . . and her rifle was designed to shoot through armored vehicles for crying out loud, so it’s gonna hurt.

The PTSD is more apparent in the climax and in the real world than it is when she’s in-game.

Göran Isacson

I see. I do like that they at least change up the genre, at least there’s some variety to the settings then. Also, does the PTSD stop when Kirito gives off his radiant aura of main protagonist and it never rears it’s ugly head again, or does she still have problems but they’re just mitigated by having a supportive friend? I ask because… well, my faith in the writer going for the latter is somewhat weak, to say the least.

Ziko577

She will be in the second series sometime this year. It’ll probably only be 13 eps. though because the GGO arc is only 2 volumes long in the novels and that’s really nothing compared to what the did with the first anime.

natchu96

The funny thing with the Progressive storylines they’re putting out is that it appears back when they met on the first floor Kirito thought Asuna had so much talent that he can’t actually see her sword MOVE when she uses her skills. She apparently has never played video games in her life.

Then yeah, she becomes a damsel in distress and then a plot device for Fairy Dance, gets sidelined for Phantom Bullet (hope they don’t screw that up in the anime this year eh?), then finally gets her own story in Mother’s Rosario . . . and can’t even get a happy ending. Then get’s sort of sidelined again.

She’s apparently almost just as good as Kirito is, but only Kirito gets any chance to show off basically.

Göran Isacson

Ha ha oh wow, poor Asuna. Maybe that’s why they didn’t do any lead-up for a follow up, the animators were such huge Asuna fans that they didn’t even want to do the coming seasons since she apparently doesn’t play that big a part in them. You never know, could be true ;)

Question though: what do you mean by “Progressive storylines”?

tubers

At least it looks like a native-res game.

The UI looks functional but it doesn’t seem to look good.

rekka_zan

That menu design looks like a custom Windows XP skin from 2006 era. Well, at least it looks nicely organized.